With the Legge di Bilancio 2017 (Budget Law), in force since January 1st 2017, the Parliament has implemented a new strategy in order to kick-start the Italian economy with the adoption of a wide array of measures to support startups and small-medium enterprises both financially and fiscally with the purpose of making them more appealing to foreign investors.

The Budget Law has designed a comprehensive plan that involves certain tax breaks, the possibility for SMEs to raise funds through crowdfunding platforms and for the so-called “innovative” startups (meaning early-stage companies that meet certain criteria set by the law: i.e. high level technology of the company’s scope, R&D expenditure or number of graduates employed, etc.) to sell transfer their tax losses to listed companies. Overall, these tools mainly aim at unlocking the economic system that so far has not proved to be capable enough to provide early-stage startups and SMEs both with financial resources and tax benefits they need to develop innovative assets and scale up their business.